


By the Sound of Your Name

by potentiality_26



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: (Lee and James), Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Fix-It, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Not Kingsman: The Golden Circle Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-08 00:49:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16419269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potentiality_26/pseuds/potentiality_26
Summary: America was a big place, and yet it seemed so small- so claustrophobic- now that Harry had allowed himself to get killed there.  Merlin didn’t want to set foot on that soil.This is not a ghost story.





	By the Sound of Your Name

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "In the Wind" by Lord Huron. This fic has lived in my drafts folder finished but the editing for an entire year, so I decided to clean it up and launch it. It ignores TGC's version of the Statesmen, among other things, but please feel free to imagine Washington played by Christopher Jackson and call it a stealth Hamilton crossover :)
> 
> Not Brit-picked.

“It’s time to wake up.”

Such as it was possible to lean into a voice, Merlin tried to.  He turned over sleepily, and when his arm hit empty air he was confused for almost a minute before he remembered where the voice was actually coming from.  Christ, Almost a minute- that was a new record.  He rolled over onto his back and let out a sigh.  "Right," he said. 

“Good morning, Merlin," the interactive interface replied.  "How did you sleep?”

Merlin thought that interface sounded... annoyingly chipper.  Though technically organically based, the interface was still just a computer program; it couldn't telegraph emotions- chipper or otherwise- unless he taught it to, and he hadn't.  But to him it still always sounded cheerful in the morning, and that still always made him grit his teeth.  He didn't sleep well anymore.  He kept dreaming that he was _there_ \- in the church- and when he woke up could smell the gun smoke and taste the blood.  He had seen things in those dreams that he had only imagined in the waking world.  He had seen what Harry must have looked like, without any _Harry_ left behind his eyes.  “Not so well,” he admitted. 

“I’m sorry.”

“It's hardly your fault, now is it?”

Merlin rolled out of bed without fanfare and made his way to the bathroom, splashing a little cold water on his face.  “What’s the overnight news?”  As he went about his usual morning routine, he let the information that the interface delivered wash over him.

“Nimue brought Galahad and Lancelot in without a hitch during the night.  Gawain and Percival are still in the field, but as of last check-in they’re both fine.  The same is true of Tristan, Caradoc, and Bors.  Elaine turned in this week’s R&D report three hours early.”  Merlin snorted at that one.  Elaine _always_ turned in the weekly R &D report three hours early.  Everyone else was doing well if it arrived three hours late.  “You have a meeting with Guinevere in two hours, and Galahad and Lancelot’s post-mission briefing will be an hour after that.”

“Anything else?”  Merlin leaned against the sink, looking- no, glaring- at his own face reflected back to him in the mirror.  There were circles under his eyes that never really seemed to go away anymore.

“Washington has been in contact.”

Merlin shut his eyes.  V-Day had been a veritable blood-bath in America, and he had been avoiding the necessity of paying the American branch a visit, claiming internal issues.  It wasn’t strictly a lie- the fallout of having a traitor within his organization had, in fact, been immense- but he knew that he would have to do it eventually.  “Right,” he said again.  Nothing else seemed to apply. 

There was a silence, then, “Are you all right?”

Merlin’s knees almost buckled.  He almost fell to the ground.  Instead, he made his way to the kitchenette, where the coffeemaker had turned on automatically the moment his feet hit the floor, and filled the largest cup he had to the brim.  “I should have made you less intuitive,” he told the interface.  He wouldn't change it now- not even if he had time, which he didn't- but he should still have expected this sort of thing when he designed the interface to begin with.   

"That’s not an answer.”

“I’m not sure,” Merlin after a while, leaning against the counter and drinking deeply.  “Is _that_ an answer?”

“It’ll do.”

 *   *   *

_“Are you all right?”_

_He looked up from the handful of grass that he had plucked from a patch of lawn as he sat, legs folded tight against his chest, in the most out of the way corner of the Kingsman grounds he had been able to find.  He saw Harry- no, Galahad, he ought to learn to think of him as Galahad, so long as there was a chance that they would end up working together together- leaning against an oak tree a little ways away._

_Galahad was currently the youngest knight in Kingsman- fresh faced and curly headed and sweetly kind.  He was quiet and observant, but with a hint of mischief running through him.  He was nice to be around, and far too handsome for his own good.  It was hard to understand, sometimes, how someone like him could have become a Kingsman in the first place.  Ever since the day Galahad showed up to oversee basic self-defense training for the prospective handlers, and had him pinned on the mat in less than a minute, all coiled strength and warm eyes and dimples when he grinned that could drive a man crazy, his mind had stubbornly stuck with Harry- even though ever since Morgana, the reigning quartermaster, had dubbed him Merlin he had thought of himself almost exclusively by that name.   Of course, he had never much cared for his own name, never wanted to hold on to the past it reminded him of, never thought it suited him the way that he was immediately, blindingly sure that Merlin did- but Harry... Galahad fit Harry too, it was true, but he was also still_ Harry _in all the ways that mattered._

_“I just killed someone,” he told H-_ Galahad. _“How do you think I am?”_

_Hands stowed away in the pockets of his perfectly pressed suit, Galahad crossed to him.  “You made a mistake and someone died.  It’s not precisely the same thing.”_

_Merlin was ninety percent sure that the agent he had been handling during the exercise was not actually dead, and something he saw in Galahad’s eyes now brought that certainty up to ninety-five.  This was an important lesson, the one he was learning now, but it was not one he thought Kingsman would actually have let someone die in order to teach him.  The sinking feeling in his gut persisted, all the same.  “I’d say ‘tell that to Lamorak’, but he’s dead.”_

_Galahad sat down next to him in the grass as if he didn’t care whether or not he stained his perfect clothes.  His expression ratcheted the probability up to ninety-nine percent.  “Lamorak would understand this.  The knights are different from the members of the handler division.  We know going in that this job will most likely cost us our lives eventually.  We’re willing to make that sacrifice.  What you have to accept is that sooner or later you’re going to have to watch it happen.”_

_The certainty- and lack of fear- in Galahad’s eyes was astonishing.  The members of the handler division had different training, too, but he knew what the knights went through all the time.  For the first time he saw Galahad as fresh faced and curly headed and sweetly kind, but also as someone who faced death without batting an eye and pulled the trigger on an innocent animal just because he had been told to and never looked back._

_Galahad had faith.  And Merlin found that he wanted to be the one Galahad had faith in, more than he had ever wanted anything in his life._

_“I’ll be sure to remember that.”_

_Galahad- Harry- squeezed his arm and smiled kindly.  One hundred percent._

 *   *   *

“You’re going to America,” Guinevere informed him the moment he arrived at their meeting. 

Merlin had slept in his rooms at the manor that night- he honestly couldn't remember the last time he had actually gone home, and with the kitchenette and all his tech so handy he could see little reason to- so he had just walked to Arthur’s office- which was currently, provisionally, Guinevere’s office- from there when it was time for said meeting.  And quite frankly, he should have known exactly what she was going to tell him before he even started.    

The Guinevere position was, in many ways, the position behind the Arthur position.  It was often billed as more of an HR position, and in some ways that was true.  Guinevere was the one who chose which agents went on which missions, and how they went about it when they did.  Arthur may have given the orders, but he had always needed to clear them with the queen first, because she was the one who met with their people, before and after every job.  She was the one who got to know them, the one who analyzed their weaknesses and strengths.

After so long assuming he would eventually see the day that Chester King loosened his grip on the seat and Harry became Arthur, Merlin had refused to take the job.  It simply didn’t feel right.  And he couldn’t promote Percival, who was the next in line, because he had threatened to drown himself in the Thames before he took the job.  So instead he had made Guinevere do Arthur’s job without Arthur’s title.  She took this with a good grace, but she used it shamelessly as an excuse to make him do all the things she didn’t want to do anyway. 

Guinevere was a lovely woman who nevertheless did not pull punches when it came to doing the things that needed to be done- and going to America, apparently, was one such thing. 

“But I have to do Galahad and Lancelot’s debrief,” he protested, all the same.

“Oh certainly,” she replied, with genial smile that did not promise good things.  “Get that off your plate.  But the moment it's over, you will send them to me, and you will get on a plane.”

America was a big place, and yet it seemed so small- so claustrophobic- now that Harry had allowed himself to get killed there.  Merlin didn’t want to set foot on that soil.  He didn’t want to sleep there, eat there, breathe there.  He didn’t want to sympathize with Washington about all his losses when Merlin by contrast had had only two- one of them a man the Kingsman were actually far better off without, and one of them a man who was always supposed to be just an agent among many to Merlin but who never had been and never, ever would be.

It crept up on him at inconvenient times, one of the first things Harry had ever said to him.  About how all the knights went into this work knowing that it could eventually cost them their lives.  About sacrifice.  Merlin had learned that too, there was no way to avoid it, but somehow over the years- at least where Harry was concerned- he had managed to forget. 

He had managed to forget that Harry could actually die.  He shouldn't have, though.  Everyone died.     

“I have so much to do,” he tried.  “Someone else could-”

“No,” Guinevere said firmly.  “It has to be you.”  Something in her eyes suggested that she felt was sending him as much for his benefit as Washington’s.

He resented it highly. 

She laid a light hand on his arm.  “I miss him too, you know.”  She had been Harry’s choice for Guinevere after the last one retired.  Of course she missed him too.  They had been close.  They were friends.   

Suddenly Merlin resented that too.

*   *   *

_An agent was really dead this time.  There was no way to see what had happened as Merlin’s fault- there was no mistake involved, no faulty intel, nothing but bad luck and an unfortunate coincidence- but in the five years he had_ been _Merlin he had never before had someone die on him like that.  It hit him hard._

_Merlin had been sitting alone in the dustiest, most out of the way corner of Kingsman HQ for hours- so when he was found he wasn’t surprised that it was Harry who found him.  It turned out Harry was good at that sort of thing._

_He sat down next to Merlin, his broad shoulders radiating heat.  “All right?” he asked._

_Merlin shrugged. “I’m not sure what to do,” he admitted._

_Harry was silent for a moment, then his lips quirked.  He withdrew a flask from inside his jacket and presented it to Merlin._

_Merlin barked out a laugh and took a swig.  More than a few swigs later- probably most of the flask- what happened was still awful but at least Merlin was starting to be pleasantly numbed to it.  He and Harry had toasted their fallen agent, and then reminisced a while about the good and the bad.  Harry didn’t dispense any wisdom about sacrifice this time, but he probably didn’t think that he had to anymore._

_For the most part, he was right._

_Merlin liked Harry- and he was still Harry, always Harry, to him- as much as he had from the very first time that he met him.  More, perhaps.  Probably he liked Harry too much.  Harry, who he had once had trouble believing had ever become a Kingsman at all, but who had gone on and proved himself to be ruthless, reckless, and incredibly short tempered.  Harry, who was a whirlwind of charm and raw danger.  Harry, who had been terrifying to handle even back when- despite Lamorak’s fake death during the final phase of Merlin’s training- a part of Merlin had still thought of his agents as invincible.  How on earth was he going to watch Harry go into the field now?_

_Merlin had no intention of admitting any of that to Harry, of course.  He figured that after a few more drinks he might not even remember._

_After a few more drinks, Merlin still remembered.  Harry had good scotch in that flask, and Merlin kept thinking that it probably tasted even better on Harry’s mouth- and that was the heart of it, wasn’t it?  Not that someone was dead- or, at least, not just that- and not that Harry always seemed to be able to find him when he was hurting- or, at least, not just that either- but that he cared so much more for Harry than he was ever supposed to._

_He nuzzled up to Harry’s lips and kissed him, mind chiming in too late with all the reasons why it was a bad idea.  A hand came up, cradling his face, and for a second he could have sworn that he felt a light pressure- Harry kissing him back.  The heat in his belly that was mostly the drink settled lower, and didn't feel like the drink any longer.  “Don’t,” Harry said quietly, though he pulled away only a little.  “You’re drunk and... distraught.”_

_"Yes,” Merlin admitted._

_Harry let out a breathy laugh almost a sigh that fanned out across Merlin's face.  He nodded, patting Merlin's face awkwardly._

_Merlin had never seen Harry so shaken.  He wasn’t sure that he had ever seen Harry shaken at all.  “What if I wasn’t?” he asked after a while._

_"Then you wouldn’t be,” Harry replied.  It wasn’t much of an answer- but it was something all the same.  That heat burned inside him._

*   *   *

Now that he was going to America- now that he apparently didn’t have much choice in the matter- Merlin just wanted to get it over and done with as quickly as possible.  He rushed, a little, through Eggsy and Roxy’s reports, and if he hadn’t been rushing- if he hadn’t been careless and unthinking and foolish- what happened next might not have happened at all.    

"File those away with the other mission reports, if you please.”  Merlin said it absently and without thinking.  The interactive interface was still in prototype, but it was already so convenient that Merlin had begun to use it automatically- and to forget why using it in front of other people- and in front of Eggsy in particular- wasn’t actually the best idea in the world.   

“Of course, Merlin,” the interface replied.

Across Merlin's desk, Roxy and Eggsy both froze- but it was Eggsy who unfroze first.  “What was that?” he asked.  His voice was deceptively even, but his eyes were very wide.

“Just an interactive interface,” Merlin said, with a casualness he didn’t really feel.   

“Why does the interactive interface sound like Harry?” 

Merlin was silent for a while, trying to figure a way around explaining himself.  He couldn’t seem to find one, and eventually he realized that he wouldn’t.  Only the truth would do.  “Because I missed him,” he admitted at last.  His voice sounded... gravelly, rubbed raw and unfamiliar.  “Because he always checked in with me when he was on missions, because he wore the glasses all the time and even on long-term deep-cover missions I would still be able to break through his security and look through them.  For six months we were too busy keeping the world from falling apart for me to think about it, and then I did.  And that was the longest I’d gone without hearing his voice in twenty years.”

He had had years and years of footage from Harry’s missions to draw from; it had been almost too easy to replicate his voice and then apply it to the bare-bones A.I. he had already created to serve this purpose.

But he never called it Harry, or let it call him anything other than Merlin.  Anything else would have been excessive, or so he had told himself at the time- but one look at Eggsy’s face now made it clear that he had been deluding himself.

It was already excessive. 

*   *   *

_Harry had never been able to explain what was so different about Lee Unwin to him._

_He and Merlin had been lovers for almost a year by then-_ hands shoved roughly down each others' pants in the coat closet _lovers_ , bodies writhing and fumbling against each other in the dark _lovers_ , thank God you’re still alive for a minute there I was sure you weren’t _lovers_ _\- and Merlin liked to think that after all the times he had confided in Harry when it was all going wrong for him Harry ought to feel able do the same with him once in a while._

_But Harry didn’t speak.  Harry hadn’t said a word since he paid that visit to Lee Unwin’s family.  Merlin didn’t know what to do about it.  He didn’t really know if there was anything to do.  But Harry was there, Harry had showed up in Merlin's office and not left- so there had to be something after all._

_“Let me take you home,” Merlin said._

_Harry blinked and spoke for the first time since he gotten back to HQ that day.  “I’m not really in the mood for... anything.”_

_"Oh!” Merlin managed.  “No, I didn’t mean... I just don’t think you ought to be alone right now.”  He suspected it was his own fault Harry had that impression.  They had never just slept together before- except for that time when they had spent four hours wrapped half-naked around each other in a shack in the middle of snowy nowhere sharing body heat, which was the last time Merlin intended to let himself be persuaded out into the field, thank you very much- and Merlin wasn’t sure how to behave around him sometimes.  He also wasn’t sure how he would deal with waking up next to Harry in the morning without being sure he ever would again.  He would do it though, somehow.  This time it was Harry who needed help making sense of what they had lost, and Merlin couldn’t bear to let him down.  “Let me take you home,” he repeated._

_Harry nodded, as if in a daze, and Merlin took him home._

*   *   *

Merlin went straight to the Americans' HQ when he arrived in the states.  He had no desire for sightseeing. 

Washington himself met Merlin on the tarmac.  “Hello, Merlin,” he said as he clasped Merlin's hand.  “It’s been a while.”

Merlin resolutely ignored any implications that might or might not be behind those words, given how long he had already been ignoring Washington’s calls.  “Yes, it has,” he said.

And somehow Washington seemed satisfied with that, because he launched into explanations, then, with no further attempt at small talk.  “You understand that it’s been very difficult for us to... get back on our feet, as it were,” he said as they walked into the base together.  “We’ve only just gotten this place back to how it was, and it hasn’t exactly been easy to keep up communications with the other branches.”

 Merlin nodded.  “How many did you lose?”

“Seven.  What about you?”

“We had some injuries, but only two fatalities.”  The words tasted as bitter on Merlin’s tongue as he had always known they would, but he got them out.  “We were… very lucky.”  That tasted even worse.

Washington gave him a sympathetic smile.  “It’s the sacrifice we make.”

Merlin was sick of that word, sacrifice.  “Yes.”

“This job takes and takes- but every once in a while it gives back.”  There was a light in Washington’s eyes, then, something kind and warm, something that Merlin hadn’t expected to see on this trip, not after everything that had happened.  “Follow me.”

Merlin already had been, but he kept his mouth shut and walked behind Washington.  Deep in his gut, something he couldn’t entirely explain in his own mind was happening, something wild and twisty and perhaps not wholly unpleasant.  Was it fear?  Apprehension? 

Was it hope?

Washington led him down to their infirmary wing, which Merlin could immediately see was well occupied, even so long after V-Day.  Washington came to stop by one of the beds and then nodded toward it and Merlin just… stopped.  And he didn’t just stop walking- he stopped breathing, he stopped thinking, he stopped... everything.

He just stood there and stared at the body in the bed, eventually starting up again enough to think _Harry_.  And then, a while after that, say, “He’s-”

“All right, we think,” Washington said.  “Unfortunately we know everything we can know until he wakes up, but he’s stable enough to be moved.”

“Well,” Merlin managed.  It took a while- it felt like a million years- but he rallied enough to turn and clasp Washington’s hand anew.  Washington held on to him, bracingly.  "Thank you.”

Washington’s mouth twitched upward into a tiny smile and he squeezed Merlin’s hand before releasing it.  “I’ll just give you a moment,” he said.

“Thank you,” Merlin repeated.

Once he was alone, Merlin sat down on the edge of Harry’s bed.  He put a hand on Harry’s forehead, brushing away errant curls, then he bent and pressed his face into the pillow beside Harry’s head.  _It's time to wake up._

*   *   *

_Harry had been spending the night in Merlin’s rickety little cot behind his office more often than in his own home for a while by then, and Merlin had never been more grateful for that than he was right now._

_Neither of them really wanted to be alone.  Not with James dead.  Not with the trials starting up and James’ killer walking free somewhere.  Not with- to top all of that off- Lee Unwin’s son back in Harry’s life and, unless Merlin was mistaken, which he almost never was where these things were concerned, head over heels in hero worship with Harry- which Harry was sure to have mixed feelings about given what had happened to Lee._

_“God damn it, James,” Harry murmured as he lay there next to Merlin, startling him away from thoughts about Harry’s new protégée and directing them somewhere much less comfortable._

_“What was it that you told me back when I was still in training?”  Merlin asked it into the darkness between them.  “That all the knights know that this job will probably cost them their lives eventually?  That they willingly make the sacrifice?”_

_Harry snorted.  “I wasn’t exactly old and wise when I said that.  I’m only a few years older than you, if you’ll recall.”_

_“Yes,” Merlin agreed, and realized for the first time that Harry was right.  He was_ young _back when he first said that- much younger than he had ever seemed to Merlin at the time._

_“Well," Harry said after a while, "I’m glad you took it to heart, but- well, I suppose I never expected to watch so many make the sacrifice.”_

_It took Merlin a minute to realize that what Harry was saying was that he had never expected to live this long.  He hadn’t thought about Harry dying in such a long time that it crept up on him very suddenly, that he- that they- might be living on borrowed time._

_Merlin didn’t know what to say to that.  He wasn’t sure there was anything he could say to that, not without telling Harry things that he wasn’t yet ready to admit to aloud. There was a distinct possibility that he would never be ready._

_So he turned and he kissed it into Harry’s stomach instead, kissed it all across his hipbones, and kissed it down and down to his cock._ Stay with me.  I can’t lose you. 

_Harry gave a soft groan as he sank into Merlin’s mouth that wasn’t really answer- but like that first whiskey drenched kiss, it was something._

*   *   *

Having Harry back- _alive_ \- was a dream come true, but getting him home to HQ turned out to be a logistical nightmare.  Still, Merlin was grateful to have Harry someplace where he could keep an eye on him, even as he slept on.  According to the doctors, Harry might wake up at any moment, but being Harry he was taking his sweet time about it.

Merlin and Eggsy took shifts sitting with him, except when Eggsy was working and Merlin was handling him- at those times Guinevere or Percival or their new Lancelot would come to sit with him instead.  Usually when an agent was hurt Merlin wouldn’t bother with having them watched twenty-four seven, but this was Harry and he had been all but dead and no one seemed interested in calling him on it- not after news of the interactive interface had broken and traveled through the ranks at an embarrassing speed.   

Right now Eggsy was with Harry notherand Merlin was in a meeting with Guinevere, who had yet to explain exactly why she had wanted to see him so badly. 

“I’ve seen the Unwin boy walking the halls, wringing his hands,” she told him, amused.  “He’s terrified he’s put Harry out of a job.”

“Well,” Merlin started. 

“When are you going to start paperwork to give him the Arthur position?”

“You mean the Unwin boy?” Merlin asked, blinking.

Guinevere rolled her eyes.  “No, Merlin, I mean Harry.”

“Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Harry is, in fact, in a coma.  I haven’t been able to ask him-”

“You know that asking him would merely be a formality.  He’ll do his duty, Merlin- like he always has.  So what are you waiting for?”

“For you to tell me I could, I suppose,” Merlin admitted at last.  “The most senior knight takes the Arthur position when Arthur steps down or dies.  And that would be Harry, in a coma or not.  But I’d like to think that we’re in a new age, here.  And you’ve been doing the job quite successfully for months now.”

“Yes, I have.  Because Kingsman needs an Arthur.  But it also needs a Guinevere, and I can’t do my job- my real job, the one _he_ picked me for- unless someone else is the bad guy.  Do you understand that?”

“Yes, yes of course.  As long as you understand that you aren’t… being passed over.”

“I would only think that as much as you would.”  She patted his chest.  “We operate behind the scenes, you and me.  The big chair would suit us badly.  Harry though- it’ll suit Harry.”    

Merlin nodded, because Guinevere wasn’t wrong about that, but he wasn’t sure what else to say.  Maybe there was nothing to say, not until Harry finally, finally woke up. 

And since Harry’s timing was nothing if not dramatic, Merlin was only a half surprised when _that_ was when Eggsy called him over the glasses, excitement ringing brightly in his voice.

“Merlin, Merlin,” he said.  “He’s awake.”

Merlin looked sharply up at Guinevere.  “I have to-”

She smiled and shoved his chest.  “Go.  _Go_!”  

*   *   *

_From the very beginning- ever since the first time Harry told him about sacrifice- a part of Merlin, way in the back of his mind, must have known that there was a chance, and actually a fairly good one at that, that Harry was going to have to make that sacrifice.  That he wouldn’t ever get to grow old._

_“This ain’t that kind of movie,” Valentine said, and then- bang.  Merlin watched through Harry’s eyes as he got shot in the head._

_A part of Merlin must have known it might happen like that._

_But if a part of Merlin had, he... wasn’t ready.  Maybe if he had been he wouldn’t have tried so desperately to avoid grieving, to avoid so much as thinking about it.  Maybe he wouldn’t have turned around one day and realized that Harry was gone and lost it a little.  Maybe he wouldn’t have built the interactive interface, or put himself into a situation that would make it so impossible to ever move on._

_Then again, maybe there was no way to be ready at all._

*   *   *

“I can’t believe you woke up when that boy was sitting with you instead of me,” Merlin said, sourly, as he sat down at Harry’s bedside.

It was only half true.  He knew how Eggsy adored Harry, and how important to him it must have been to be the one who spoke to Harry first.  Merlin hadn’t had the luxury of falling apart over Harry, and so most of the organization- including Eggsy- had never really had a chance to consider what Harry’s death might have done to him.  He didn’t blame them; he had hidden it for a reason.  They hadn’t had a chance to bond over Harry’s loss the way they might have; Merlin could afford to give him this. 

Harry only shrugged, such as he could under the circumstances.  He opened his mouth to speak but was cut off before he got the chance. 

“Merlin,” said Harry’s voice, coming out the PA system rather than Harry himself, “You have a call from Elaine.  Would you like to take it here or in your office?”

Merlin swore inwardly but managed to keep a straight face as he answered, “My office.  I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Very good.”

Harry regarded Merlin silently, with just the faintest twitch to his lips.  He was amused, but not surprised.  It struck Merlin as very likely that Eggsy had told Harry about the interface before Merlin arrived.  Knowing Eggsy, he had made much of how fucked up he thought it was.  Thinking about it now, Merlin couldn’t really blame him either.      

“If you have anything to say,” Merlin said, prickling.  “Say it.”

“I’m just thinking about going to sleep,” Harry returned, innocently.

Merlin fought the urge to tell him that he wasn’t allowed to go to sleep, not ever again.  “Right,” he said instead.  "In that case, I've got work to do."  He rose.  "You've made quite a nuisance of yourself, I'll have you know." 

“You missed me.”  Harry’s voice was very warm.

“Yes.”  The admission came out as though Merlin’s throat was closing up behind it.

Harry smiled sleepily.  “Love you too,” he murmured. 

“You bastard,” Merlin muttered as Harry actually fell asleep, just like that.  He kissed Harry’s forehead.  “I do,” he whispered.  “I do.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Come see me on [tumblr](http://potentiality-26.tumblr.com).


End file.
